Star-crossed
by Iggycat
Summary: "There is, without a doubt, no worse feeling than realizing something is wrong with you." USUK


_A/N: Written for a friend's birthday :)_

**Disclaimer:** _I own nothing. Rights go to the respective owners. Hetalia belongs to Hidekaz Himaruya._

* * *

**Star-crossed**

By Iggycat

* * *

There is, without a doubt, no worse feeling than realizing something is wrong with you. I didn't understand it at first, when I was a child. No one told me why when I turned up again, three days after dying of the plague, I was called a witch and burned at the stake. I didn't dare go back after that searching for answers.

Aside from being frightened, I didn't think much of it, but as I grew I started to wonder. When I dropped dead next to my fellow Roundheads in 1642 and reappeared not a day later in fresh gear and claiming to be the same fellow who had fallen yesterday, they looked at me like I was mad. I have similar stories of falling to Prussian weaponry in 1742 and an American bayonet in 1776. But time and again I resurfaced, whether I fell on the battlefield or to an illness. And time and again my former friends and allies would look at me with confusion or anger when I returned, either begrudgingly allowing me to resume where I'd left off, or more likely, sending me packing and ensuring my death if I ever returned claiming to be Arthur Kirkland.

In 1825 a kind elderly woman found me freezing on a pebbled sidewalk and took me in. She fed me, warmed me, and only asked in return that I live. I didn't know how to tell her that was not a problem; I was different, I was not mortal, but I didn't know what I was.

The woman, sweet as sugar, agreed to let me continue living with her once I'd recovered. I would chop wood for her in winter and work in one of London's many factories to pay off my burden. I grew fond of her, this woman, Eleanor, and quite enjoyed her company more than I had any other human.

"You're such a handsome young man," she smiled at me one night as she washed the soot of the factory off my face with a wet cloth. I closed my eyes as she dragged it along my cheeks and nose, exposing a splattering of orange freckles. "Such a beautiful lad," she smiled again, now patting my burnt auburn hair, her hand slow and fragile. "Why don't you settle down with a nice lady? Have a family of your own?"

I smiled sadly at her. I'd had many families over the years, and all had either disowned me or thrown me out when I returned to them to offer my love after a war or an accident. It made it very hard for me to bond with humans, knowing that at some point it was going to happen; I would die and I would be tossed aside just like every other dead man. The only difference would be they would be mourning someone who was not dead.

"I find it hard to give or receive love," I told her truthfully. What I didn't tell her was that it pained me to become attached to her, knowing she would become just like the others without even realizing it. "I don't think I'm cut out for such emotions."

Eleanor smiled softly as she placed the wet rag on the edge of a basin at her feet. She held my head in her hands.

"My dear, Arthur. The world is unkind to us all, but is up to you whether you choose to be so unkind as the Earth."

"I don't understand, Eleanor."

"If you choose to lock up your heart, your love," she started, brushing my cheek slowly with the pad of her thumb. "You are hurting not only yourself, but those meant to accept and reciprocate your love."

"But-"

"No buts, Arthur," she spoke, standing slowly and pressing a powdered kiss to my forehead. "I'm not telling you what to do, I'm only offering advice." She then disappeared into her quarters and I was left alone with a dripping face and a mind even more confused and muddled than it had been before.

Eleanor was right about at least one thing: the world was unkind. In a cruel twist of fate there was an accident at the factory the following day. My pant leg got stuck in one of the contraptions, and with it, my leg. I lost quite a bit of blood, and that's all I remembered before waking up, as usual, in new garments in the middle of a graveyard. I hadn't gathered much over the years but I was able to at least ascertain one thing: whenever I reincarnated, it was always in a graveyard. It wasn't always a cemetery per say, sometimes it was simply a patch of fresh dirt under a tree, but it was always near the resting place of a fallen Englishman. Whether I closed my eyes in France, Austria, or Spain, I always awoke on a seemingly English piece of foreign soil. It was the damndest thing, but it must have had something to do with me. Was I somehow tied to England? The English populace?

I stood and checked my surroundings. I was still in London, on the southern tip of the city and a few blocks from Eleanor's home, but overall not too far. I walked briskly, not used to these new leather loafers and the second-hand tweed coat that was snug in some places and baggy in others. When I arrived, I knocked fervently until a moment later the metal lock unlatched and I heard the sound of wood creaking. There stood Eleanor, dressed in mourning attire and holding a handkerchief to her old, sad eyes. It pained me beyond words to see her in such distress and to know I was the cause of it.

"Eleanor, oh Eleanor, please don't cry," but as I moved to hold her, she pushed me away.

"Sir, please control yourself!" she cried in despair and I took a step back not to confuse her any further. "You will address me as Mrs. Clarke, and you will calmly tell me to what I owe the honor of your visit."

"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Clarke," I apologized, and removed my hat to show respect. "I almost forgot...that you wouldn't recognize me."

"Recognize you?" she asked curiously, as she looked up at me.

"Yes," I said eagerly, a tiny twinge of hope building like a fire in my gut, saying this time would be different, this time everything would be okay. I took in a deep breath and steadied myself.

"It's me, Arthur, Mrs. Clarke. You took me in three years ago out of the kindness of your heart and-"

But I continued no further as Eleanor had removed one of her dainty white gloves and smacked me speechless. She drew away, but I could see the tears welling up in her eyes.

"How dare you," she spat at me as I stood there helpless. "How dare you come to my home and pose as my beloved son, just as I start to mourn him."

I don't know whether it hurt more to stand there and know Eleanor would never accept me again or to hear that she'd considered me her son.

"Are you trying to mock me, sir? In your search for a few pennies did you think it fine to come and try to deceive me? Do you think me a fool?"

She was crying now and it took all my self-restraint not to cross the doorway and hold her in my arms.

"Get out," she said at once as she moved to close the door. "Get out of here and don't return until you're half the man Arthur was."

She shut the door and I stood there cold and alone and wondered how I could be half as good as Arthur when I _was_ Arthur. I looked into the glass plated window and saw my new reflection for the first time: tamed brown hair, swept to the side, elongated nose, no freckles, but the same deep green eyes. Those for whatever reason, never changed.

I decided on that day in 1828, that it was not worth exposing my heart and love to the world, because it would always be battered, abandoned, and returned.

* * *

I've died 8 times since the mishap at the factory: once of illness in 1879, once of unfortunate circumstance in 1912, three times of gas, machine gun fire, and grenade respectively from 1914-1918, once in 1940 by German bomb, once in 1944 by German bullets, and most recently, in 1989 of cancer. At least I've had an interesting assortment of deaths.

I'd sworn off humans after Eleanor. Not completely, of course. I used them when I saw fit for sex, money, or brief company, but I never, under any circumstances, got close to any human. If one of them started to get attached to me I would disappear. It was better for both of us in the long run. That rational, undisputable logic had worked well for me for almost 200 years. If I kept my distance, they would keep theirs, and my heart would never be burdened again, or so I thought. But there was an anomaly in my equation. There was a tall, blonde, and always cheerful anomaly that walked into my life one day in February 2010.

I'd moved to America in 2009 because, why not? Being some sort of immortal gave me copious amounts of time to kill. I landed in Boston, tried it out for a few weeks then made my way down to New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, then went west to Chicago, St. Louis, Wichita, and somehow found myself in Albuquerque, New Mexico by New Year. It was an alright city, perhaps a bit barren and quite dry, but overall nice. I decided to stay awhile before I continued on to California and then perhaps to Vancouver or back to England. It would be a temporary home, all places were, seeing as I didn't have one place where I felt I truly belonged.

I found myself a flat and a job at an arts and crafts store. Being immortal, unfortunately, did not make me immune to paying the bills.

It was early February. I was bundled in a cashmere turtleneck, the article of clothing I'd awoken wearing when my body regenerated. I wasn't overly fond of the body I'd acquired in 1989. It was of average height with a tangled mess of blonde hair that always seemed to be matted no matter how many times I brushed through it, a pair of ghastly thick eyebrows, and of course the same green eyes I'd had since as long as I could remember. I wouldn't say I was looking forward to my next death in the hopes that I'd acquire a nicer body to transport my murky, immortal soul, but I was rather displeased with my current one.

I pulled a green apron atop my sweater and tied a simple knot at the back. I made my way toward the register and relieved frail and elderly Agatha from her shift, always making sure to avert my eyes. Every time she smiled at me and said, "Thank you, Arthur, sweetheart," I felt a small piece of a past me crack and crumble into dust.

There was no one in line so I took my time setting up the register. I told Agatha she could leave, that I'd clock her out and myself in, it was no problem. She thought it was an act of kindness, but really I just couldn't be in her presence for more than a few moments without being reminded of Eleanor. I needed some sort of distraction I needed-

"Hey there," a young man, perhaps a university student, grinned at me as he dropped a stack of canvases and a few tubes of oil paint onto the counter. The man was handsome, tall and broad but not overly built. He had dirty blonde hair, parted on the left and swept off to the right. He pushed a few locks behind his ear and smirked at me. "Anybody home?"

I blinked and settled on his face, clean shaven, with bright blue eyes hidden behind a pair of wire spectacles.

"Terribly sorry," I apologized as I started scanning and bagging his items. I had to sneak a peek once more though, halfway through bagging his items, to mark him in my memory. Humans so handsome were rare, beauty was fleeting. In all my years I'd only seen a handful of men as striking as the one that stood in front of me.

"You're new? And you're English."

The first was a question, the second a statement, though it did cross my mind that they should've been reversed.

"Yes and yes," I said casually, ringing up the last tube of paint and throwing it in the bag. "Your total is $68.98."

"Whereabouts?" he asked, handing me a credit card. That question used to stump me. Where was I from? Everywhere and nowhere. I had no idea.

"London," I said instead, because it was one of the few English cities that an American was likely to know.

"Oh yeah?" The man replied with another grin. "I've been to England a few times. Feels like a lifetime ago though."

I handed him his bag, and with it a questioning look. 'A lifetime ago?' The boy couldn't be more than 20 or 21. He didn't even know the definition of a lifetime.

"Have a good day," I said as cheerily as I could, and turned to help the next customer, a middle-aged woman buying a new pair of crocheting needles.

I didn't expect to see the handsome man again, but he appeared the next week, and the one after that, and before I knew it he was asking me something that I so dreaded.

"I'm gonna cut the bullcrap 'cause I know you're short tempered enough as it," Alfred, that was his name, smiled at me as I bagged yet another canvas. "Go out with me, Arthur."

* * *

I quit my job at the arts and crafts store and picked one up as a waiter. Alfred found me. When I quit that and started reshelving books at the library he found me. At the supermarket, the gas station, the post office, he always found me. I couldn't disappear from Alfred and I couldn't figure out why. I was packing my bags when a knock came from the front door. I opened it and tried to stay calm. Of course he'd find my ultimate hiding spot, it was only a matter of time.

"Can I come in?" Alfred asked, peering inside at the boxes scattered around the room. He was holding something behind his back but I was too distraught to think much of it.

"Alfred, I'd really rather you didn't."

He smiled sadly at me. Even in despair he was the most beautiful human I'd ever seen.

"I thought you'd say that," he said, bringing a canvas out from behind him. "So I made you something to remember me."

He turned the painting over and handed it to me, and I couldn't deny that it was absolutely stunning. For all the times I'd bagged Alfred's canvases and paints, I never once actually saw a finished product.

On the canvas was a beautiful landscape with luscious green hills and wide open sky. There was a very detailed manor house in the distance, and sheep littered the knolls of the scene.

"Alfred, this is beautiful," I said, because it was honestly one of the most gorgeous pieces of art I'd ever come across. He had the skill of a man three times his age.

"It's an English countryside. I modeled it off a picture I took a ways ago," he said sheepishly, but still with a smile. Always with a smile. "Sorry if the colors aren't quite right. My photo's kinda old and the colors were worn out."

"Alfred, it's fine, honestly."

He grinned, but not with its usual intensity.

"Well, I don't wanna interrupt," he said motioning to the boxes. "I just came to say goodbye."

I knew then that Alfred was something exceptional; exceptionally stupid perhaps, but still, somehow an exception. He was different from other humans, but not just in his looks, there was something there, something strong but in no way tangible that made me want to grasp on to him and not let go.

He turned to leave and before I could catch myself I stopped him.

"Alfred. Alfred, wait," I stepped past the doorway and Alfred turned around eagerly like he had never really expected me to let him go. I stared at him, and he stared back, but I had no idea what to say to him. How do you sum up 1000 years of pent up feeling in a way that a human can understand?

"I don't want you to become another Eleanor," I said at long last, not expecting him to comprehend.

"What?" he asked, just as I expected, and I sighed. I put a hand on my arm and squeezed it just to feel something solid.

"Someone once told me that if I don't put my heart on the line I'll never find love, but I'm desperately afraid to do just that."

Alfred took a step toward me and put a hand on top of my own that had settled on my arm.

"I think we're all scared of that, Arthur. Everyone's afraid of offering up a part of themselves only to have it handed right back to them," he said with a small smile, squeezing my hand.

"Alfred, you don't understand."

"Maybe not, but I'd like to."

He looked at me with such genuine hope, genuine love, that I didn't know what to do. When he smiled at me I knew it was already done. I made a mistake I hadn't made in almost 200 years. I let a human into my heart.

* * *

Alfred truly was an amazing human being. He loved me in every way that Eleanor had and more. He made me scrambled eggs in the morning, and would draw a hot bath for me when I got home. He would kiss me every morning before I left for work (now as a hotel clerk), and every evening when I returned. Alfred took my love and reciprocated it tenfold. The cherry on top of it all was when Alfred made love to me. With those languid but adoring movements he made me feel so incredibly special, so remarkably alive. But it was also in those moments when I felt the most vulnerable. It was with Alfred's hot breaths and sweet nothings against my ear in the middle of the night that I realized what I had and that I was eventually going to lose it.

"Alfred, would you mind chopping these for me?" I asked one evening, a peeled onion on a cutting board sat in front of me. I was staring at the knives, but couldn't move. He looked up from where he was flipping through some entertainment magazine and sent me an encouraging smile.

"You look like you got it, sweet cheeks."

Somewhere along the line I had become afraid of death, so very afraid. I reached for the knives, but just couldn't do it, and when I started tearing up and had to leave the room I told Alfred it was just the onion.

* * *

The world was terribly unkind. It was a warm morning in April, three years after I met Alfred, that I woke up draped in his arms. The night before he'd been arguing with me over seeing a therapist; it had gotten worse, to the point where many days I was afraid to go outside. Alfred was sympathetic, he thought talking it out with someone would improve my mental health but he had no idea. If I told a psychiatrist why I was really afraid they would mark me as certifiably mad.

I got out of bed and brushed my teeth, used the bathroom, and dressed myself before going downstairs. I took my keys off the peg where they'd been resting for the past two weeks that I'd been immobile. Today would be different. I would face my fears and show Alfred that I was fine, that he had nothing to worry about.

But I was wrong. I should've known better than to go out as jittery and anxious as I was. My mind wasn't clear, my thoughts were in disarray, and it wasn't long before I was living the nightmare I had tried so desperately to avoid.

"Mr. Kirkland, stay with me," a female voice said on my right. "You were in a car accident. Your left leg got tangled between the dashboard and the driver's side door. You lost a lot of blood."

I almost laughed. How ironic. How cruel. How incredibly reminiscent of last time.

* * *

I woke up in a small cemetery next to an old marble gravestone. I looked down: new brown oxfords with blue argyle socks peeking out from rolled up khaki chinos. On top I wore a light blue dress shirt underneath a royal blue v-neck sweater. I could already tell this body was more handsome than the last and all that made me want to do was cry.

I stood up and wiped the dirt off of my new pants. It was warm out, and for that I was thankful, it meant I had revived somewhere on the west coast, hopefully somewhere in New Mexico. I don't know why I was so eager to still be in the state, not when I knew what I had to do. I had to see Alfred, just one last time. I didn't even entertain the thought of him accepting me because that would cause too much emotional damage. I just wanted to see him, see those beautiful eyes and the gorgeous lips that I'd never again be able to kiss.

I made my way out of the graveyard and toward the nearest intersection which was luckily, or perhaps not so, only 5 blocks from what had been our apartment. I walked briskly, only stopping momentarily when I caught my reflection in a window. I'd been right, this body was much more handsome. I was taller, 5'11 or there about, with tan skin and a tight jaw. My freckles had returned... I hadn't seen them since 1828, and I now had short red hair gelled up just slightly in the front. It was certainly an attractive look but it didn't suit me by any right. I know I'd originally disliked the last body with messy hair and oversized brows, but after Alfred, after having Alfred coo at it and compliment it and touch it in all the right places this new body just seemed so wrong. I felt like an imposter in my own skin, and the only thing that remained from the last Arthur Kirkland, the one that had so foolishly fallen in love with a human, were those taunting green eyes.

My movements became more lethargic the closer I got to our apartment. It felt like I was moving through molasses with each step I took. Every movement, every single step took me that much closer to the end of what I knew was already over, but still it hurt. Alfred had been so... so much more than I could have ever imagined. He offered so much love in every form, and in those three years, that now felt so terribly short, I'd learned more about love, more about how the human race interacted and carried itself than I ever had before or likely ever would again. How could I face him? How could I not? I arrived at our doorstep and just stood there a few moments summoning the courage to knock. Luckily I didn't have to. Alfred opened the door.

"You're not a doctor, are you?" Alfred asked, voice hoarse. He looked awful; dirtied frazzled hair, eyes rimmed with red, clearly he'd been crying. When I didn't answer he just glanced away and shook his head.

"Sorry... I just," he let out a very deep and depressing sigh. "I lost someone really special yesterday and I've been sitting here by the door hoping one of the doctors will show up and tell me they were wrong. They accidentally read someone else's chart. Arthur's just in a coma, he's not dead." He looked up at me with the same emotion that I'd seen in Eleanor all those years ago. "Pathetic isn't it?"

"Oh, Alfred, no, no it isn't pathetic at all," I said softly and fisted my hand because I knew I had no right to touch him. He glanced up at me confused when I spoke his name.

"Do we know each other?" he asked, trying to figure me out. "I'm sorry but I don't remember you."

"I'd be surprised if you did," I replied with a soft sigh, but to my surprise, Alfred swiftly ushered me in and closed the door.

"Try me," he said with eyes so determined I was almost afraid to see his reaction once I told him.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I argued and noticed how Alfred had focused in on my eyes and refused to break contact.

"Where have I met you before?" he asked aloud, and whether he was addressing me or talking to himself I wasn't sure, but I answered regardless.

"Jo Ann's was the first place," I muttered quietly and averted my eyes but Alfred quickly grabbed my chin and made me look him in the eye. There was something swimming in those pools of blue, something I didn't expect to see in them: hope.

"Oh my God," he whispered quietly as he continued to stare me in the eyes. He let go of my chin and put both hands on either side of my face. "Oh my God... I didn't know there was someone else like me..." he mumbled as a tear dribbled its way down his face. "Arthur, oh my God."

I stood there motionless, but his words had hit me like a tidal wave.

"Another?" I whispered, as he ran his thumb across my cheek. "You mean-"

"Do you always wake up in a graveyard?"

I nodded numbly.

"And your eyes stay the same color too," he rambled out pulling me into a tight hug. "That's how I knew. No one has eyes as beautiful as yours, Arthur."

For a moment I couldn't comprehend what was happening. I stayed still in Alfred's arms as he cried into my shoulder.

"You can't die either," I tried the idea out on my tongue. Alfred pulled away and shook his head, a giant smile now present on his tear-stained face.

"I've been around since the 1600s. I've regenerated 14 times." He was looking at me with such adoration that I didn't know how to respond. "The worst was the Lusitania," he started up again out of nowhere. "Nothing is worse than knowing you're drowning."

My eyes widened and I reached out to touch his face.

"I was steerage on the Titanic," I told him, like it was something normal to tell a person.

"Oh my God," Alfred just mumbled again and drew me close. I buried my face in his neck, his 14th neck.

"Do you know what we are?" I said at some point and Alfred squeezed me tighter.

"I have no idea," he whispered softly in my ear. "But we were meant to find each other. We'll figure it out together."

He kissed the top of my new head of red hair and I thought back on the 1000 years I'd spent confused and alone. I was still confused, but perhaps the world had given me one kind gesture. Maybe Eleanor had been right about opening your heart to the world; how could you ever receive love if you never gave it a chance?

There is, without a doubt, no worse feeling than realizing something is wrong with you. But there is no better feeling than realizing you are not alone.


End file.
